With the recent advancements of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, integration between compact GPS receivers and mobile devices, such as cell phones and portable digital assistants (PDAs), is becoming popular. This merger of technology provides many different possibilities for users of the mobile devices, as their devices can perform tasks that were not previously possible. However, in many cases a user interface to GPS functionality in the mobile devices is not as robust as it could be and, in some cases, provides a bad user experience.
One problem in particular relates to the display of maps on the mobile device. Mapping applications executing on the mobile device can display a map illustrating a user's surrounding region, as determined by the GPS or other location determining mechanism. When the map is displayed to the user, the user, a location-based server, or the mapping application determines an appropriate zoom-level at which it is to be displayed.
The selected zoom-level can make a difference regarding the utility of the information. Accordingly, once the zoom-level has been set it can be manually adjusted by the user. However, it can be cumbersome and inconvenient for the user to adjust the zoom level appropriately.
Currently, systems such as Pharos' EZ Road Pocket GPS Navigator provide the ability to increase the zoom-level, or zoom in, on a map for a turn in a pre-programmed route. However, such solutions only described zooming in on a region of the map when a user has entered a pre-programmed route. That is, the zoom-level instructions are received as part of the routing data.
Therefore, it can be seen that there is a need for a mapping application that can automatically adapt the zoom-level of a map regardless of whether or not the user is following a predetermined route.